Hartford resident Stephanie Byrd spends several nights a week at her daughter’s apartment in the Sheldon/Charter Oak neighborhood of the city.
Byrd helps care for her adult daughter who moved into the newly constructed MLK apartments on Van Block Avenue in April.
“This is immaculate. It is beautiful. It is airy,” Byrd said of the new home. “Everything is in the area. You have so many businesses around here.”
The complex shed the negative and rundown connotations that often come with designated affordable apartments.
Byrd is excited to utilize the community garden and take her grandchildren to events and soccer games at the nearby Trinity Health Stadium.
“I take walks so I know what’s around and you know what, I had forgot about the ball park that is over there. We can walk there, exercise, see what's in the area,” Byrd said. “They have a community garden, and we have a plot. It is huge. So, getting back to healthy living, you can do your vegetables and your herbs.”
The original MLK apartments were opened in 1970 and consisted of 60 townhome-style apartments in brick buildings, according to Emily Wolfe, executive director of the nonprofit Sheldon Oak Central.
Sheldon Oak Central is a nonprofit affordable housing developer that was established in 1968 by four Hartford churches to create one of the first low-income housing cooperatives in Connecticut.
“Sheldon Oak came to own the complex in 1996 at the height of neighborhood disorder and gang violence,” Wolfe said. “Some of the residents who lived there then and loved their homes, but wanted better, are here today.”
Extensive land remediation was needed before the new apartments could be constructed, due to general industrial use in the area, Wolfe said.
Plans to reconstruct the apartments have been in the works for about a decade, but construction finally began in 2024. The project took about two years to construct and cost about $65 million.
About 52% of the apartments are currently occupied. Those who are interested in living there can apply for available 2-bedroom apartments online, according to Wolfe.
The apartments are reserved for families who earn at or below 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI), according to state Department of Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno.
“Sometimes people say, ‘Well, what is affordable?’ Because sometimes affordable is not that affordable,” Mosquera-Bruno said. “Well, these are actually.”
Monthly rent runs from $1,000 to $1,680, depending on apartment size and family income. That means income eligible families must have an annual income from about $35,000 to $80,000.
Marcus Smith, with the quasi-public Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA), one of the development’s funders, said he worked with the complex decades ago.
“I look around here and I remember what was once here, you know, the community space where we would hand out turkeys at Thanksgiving and wrap presents for toys for tots and pack backpacks for back to school,” Smith said.
The apartments represented more than just housing, and were a place of support and community, Smith said.
“The soul of the place lies within the people that live here, and I think of this as not so much as a celebration for what was, but more what will be, and what will continue to be,” Smith said.
